Arthur Conan Doyle quotes - page 8

I have taken to living by my wits. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.
Arthur Conan Doyle
All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.
Arthur Conan Doyle
That which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The setting is a worthy one, if the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital ....
Arthur Conan Doyle
The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Streams may spring from one source, and yet some be clear and some be foul.
Arthur Conan Doyle
'It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,' cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law.
Arthur Conan Doyle
He foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Like all Holmes' reasoning, the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained. Dr. Watson, speaking of Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night.
Arthur Conan Doyle
To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year, Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed, The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Steel True, Blade Straight.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The fair sex is your department.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so,one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.
Arthur Conan Doyle
By George!" cried the inspector. "How did you ever see that?" Because I looked for it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The game is afoot. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
These pictures are not occult, but they are psychic because everything that emanates from the human spirit or human brain is psychic. It is not supernatural; nothing is. It is preternatural in the sense that it is not known to our ordinary senses.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to more.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I will make my meaning more clear when I say that I think right and wrong are both tools which are being wielded by those great hands which are shaping the destinies of the universe, that both are making for improvement; but that the action of the one is immediate, and that of the other more slow, but none the less certain. Our own distinction of right and wrong is founded too much upon the immediate convenience of the community, and does not inquire sufficiently deeply into the ultimate effect.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.
Arthur Conan Doyle